Sylvia's Journal

Through my volunteer work with EthicalCoach I am drawn into the world of team coaching. Although intellectually I do understand the distinctions between training, process facilitation, teambuilding, team mentoring and team coaching, listening to very experienced team coaches I am (virtually) hanging out with these days recognize I have much to learn from doing it (the team coaching).

This morning we had a team coach community meeting with some 44 people attending from, among others, South Africa, UK, Holland and the US. Through this forum I am meeting, albeit virtually, several Dutch coaches – a very active European coaching club I didn’t know existed.

It was only a month ago I was talking with a team in a nearby municipal government about engaging with team coaching – I was so excited about this. It would have been my first chance at real team coaching, with the possibility of doing this virtually or face to face. 

Before I became a free agent, I had considered building up a local coaching business that would focus on helping municipal governments (paid or volunteer staff) be better at what they do, deal better with conflict, tensions, and improving their listening and inquiry skills.  Government dynamics are actually quite similar around the world. In most places I have worked with public officials I have seen very little real listening and a lot of exhortations (telling, advice giving, an addiction to being right). A few of my former colleagues have landed in local government positions (state and town) and have told me the dynamics are not all that different from the dynamics of local government in Nigeria for example.

But, among all the other things it has done, the coronavirus has also upended my adventure into the new territory of team coaching. Budgets are being redone. Whatever small budget there was is now redeployed to deal with more urgent stuff.  

I do think there is now a need, may be more than ever, for coaching, and team coaching in particular, to become a critical service that needs to stay open for business.

Numbers are now in the news every day and people are paying attention, even our president. Those of us working in the field of global health have invested countless hours to convey the importance of data to track what’s going on, whether interventions made a difference, to spot outbreaks, the effect of mitigation, and to shape policy and strategy.

Here are how my numbers are trending:

• Weight (slowly trending up)
• Steps (sharp trend down)
• Trips to the grocery store (down to negligible)
• Minutes meditated (up)
• Minutes played Wordfeud with my friend A, in Dutch and English (up)
• Audiobooks listened to (up, entirely due to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series and Louise Penny’s Detective Inspector Gamache series)
• Bike miles on the stationary bike (up)
• Bike miles on the real bike (down)
• Retirement funds (down)
• Screen time (up)
• Income (down)
• Hugs with grandchildren (0)
• Virtual hugs with grandchildren (up)
• Zoom sessions attended (up)
• Check-ins with loved ones (up)
• Number of minutes playing the violin (up)
• Pages of the Sunday New York Times read (up)
• Strands braided for the staircase runner (up)
• Average time for one strand (reduced from weeks to one evening)
• Attempts to start knitting two socks at the same time from the toes down (5)
• Attempts to start knitting two socks from the other end (2)
• Number of unused cars in our driveway (2)
• Miles driven in our unused cars (negligible)
• Frequent flyer miles (sharp down)
• Malaria pills taken (0)
• Cups of coffee (about the same)
• Cookies baked (up from close to zero – see also weight, above)

It’s interesting to play with someone who cannot read music – it is as if Axel and I come to a piece of music through two very different doors. I use words like ‘rests,’ and beats (and use a metronome), but Axel plays the guitar looking for letters that correspond to chords, that he can do fast or slow as he pleases, and keeping time on his own, not having to wait for a fiddle to lead or catch up or give him his cues. Synchronizing my fiddle tune with his chords is turning to be a challenge. Thanks to my meditation teacher who talks about kindness and gratitude, I am cool about our attempts at marital harmony. I figure that if we try to practice at least 10 to 15 minutes each that, we should be able to produce something that maybe nice to listen to, once we can all come out of the woodwork.

We have been back from DC for over 2 weeks. Although our kids, at the time, had a better sense of how irresponsible we were, something we realized later, I am happy to say that we neither contaminated anyone in DC nor were we contaminated. Now it’s up to what we let into our house.

I remember some time ago (pre-COVID19) mentioning to Axel that the good thing about getting older was that weeks went by faster. Having made the final arrangements for our 40^th wedding anniversary months and months before the actual event (April 24), I liked it that the weeks went by so fast – soon we’d all be in Holland celebrating. We would have left in 2 weeks. Instead I am now trying to figure out how to get my miles and some of the hefty cancellation fees back. I remain happy about time passing so quickly – I see spring, then summer on the horizon, and hopefully the end of virulence of COVID19 so we can hug our kids and grandkids again.  

We are remaining socially distanced while also remaining virtually close. I am finding myself checking in with people who I had not communicated with for some time, and more frequently contacting those I am close to. Now we have our Friday night cocktail Zoom session with friends in town who we can’t visit anymore. Axel calls them Zoomtails, BYOB. And so, we sit in front of our screens, toasting the various adult beverages we have just poured ourselves, eating our own snacks (not without offering them to each other – everyone saying, “no thanks, I prefer my own snacks!”) We don’t talk that much about the virus or our government anymore. It’s mostly chitchat like before.

As of Sunday, we are initiating a weekly ‘Dinner with Friends,’ Sunday night meal – this of course only works if you are more or less in the same time zone, in other words, the time is right for dinner – so the invitees are friends nearby. We all cook the same thing, at least that’s the plan, and then we can imagine sitting around the table as we did during the olden days.

Such is the power of imagination. Not only do people come up with great ideas for staying in touch, for keeping kids occupied, for religious meetings, dance classes, therapy sessions, and toasting to good health with friends, etc. I also suspect that many new businesses will emerge from this; and old businesses will be transformed with the discovery of the possibilities that are emerging in our greatly enlarged virtual space.

I enjoy the imagination that goes into the production of the endless stream of funny videos, the brilliant cover pages of the New Yorker and other art work that circle around the world and that make me laugh so hard.

Headspace has several courses that focus on creating images in the mind to help people stay grounded in the here and now. Sometimes I find this very difficult.

I am currently reading a historical novel about the First World War. One of the protagonists, a newly enlisted member of the British army fighting in France, receives frequent letters from his new wife in England. She describes, in excruciating detail, the fancy imaginary meal she is cooking every day for her husband. He enjoys these imaginary meals, even shares them with his mates, all the while being stuck in the muddy and cold trenches on the front line. 

In the meantime, our imagination is tested when we are used to cook a meal just so but lacking one ingredient. No longer can we step into our car and drive to the grocery store. Getting groceries is a very complicated affair these days as we need to follow what are close to surgical theater procedures to unpack the groceries. So, we have to draw on our imagination to make up for the missing parts. Luckily, we don’t have substitute tulip bulbs for onions quite yet.

When we lived in Kabul, lockdowns were common, especially after a bomb was dropped someplace or rumors circulated. We had a garden and people who cooked and cleaned for us and a good internet connection. After work was done we played scrabble,  watched a movie, I embroidered, and knitted. We had an elliptical machine upstairs and I had a yoga routine; we even had hula hoops and practiced with the man who was hired to guard us. The enemy was outside, unseen and often undetectable, only bigger than our current enemy, but a potentially lethal enemy nevertheless.

Compared to those days, our current lockdown, called by a different name, is easier to manage. It’s true we don’t have anyone cooking and cleaning for us, and getting the newspaper and mail is more complicated now, what with gloves and disinfecting anything that comes into our house from the outside. But we have a yard that is waking up from winter, we live by the ocean with its calming rhythm of the tides and waves. We can have a glass of wine whenever we want, or something stronger.

I feel incredibly lucky, blessed, privileged – no hardship for us here. But I am troubled by my inability to do anything other than giving money (selectively, in the face of overwhelming needs) for those who are homeless,  on the run, displaced, stuck in no-man’s lands and/or addicted to things they can no longer get. 

I completed a 10 day course on Headspace on appreciation – with everything so out of balance it seemed like a good course to take, but I have found it hard to meditate on this topic – if there had been an exam I would have flunked it. Not because I have nothing to appreciate. Rather, because I find it very hard to live in the here and now in these very unsettling times where disappointments over what could have been, or worry about what is ahead crowd out the ‘being here now.’

All these things we thought could only be done face to face are now being done online, including our silent meeting for worship (Quakers) and yesterday my violin lesson. The possibility only exists, of course, if you have a solid internet connection and at least a couple of devices so everyone in the household can continue to participate in the world. 

This is the new differentiator between the have and have-nots. We knew access to the internet was important but it had never been such a critical factor as it is now: for kids to continue their schooling, for workers to continue in their jobs, for consulting with medical personnel and for information from experts and authorities on what to do and not to do and where to go for assistance.

Sita is now very busy with mutual help efforts to make sure no one is left out or left behind in her local community. She has asked us to do the same in our own community and pointed us to the findhelp.org website that directs people to local organizations and agencies that can assist with needs for food, healthcare consultations, transportation, money, work, etc. 

Mutual help societies have always been important aspects of communal life in many African and Asian countries – it is heartening that in this country, known for its rugged individualism, mutual help is now surfacing everywhere. The imagine comes to mind of a small seed pushing its first little tendrils through paved over land – we paved the world over with ‘me and mine’ concerns, that are now beginning to show cracks, as the small green sprouts push upward.

I find myself balancing on the head of a pin these days, teetering. Leaning to one side I appreciate what the calamity is bringing us, the care and concern, the freedom of not needing to pay attention to how I look, what I wear – I can be in my robe all day, we can eat beans and not worry about visitors entering our house and sniffing the air.

And then I teeter the other way. That feeling is painfully familiar from our plane crash. That first hour of panic and feeling so totally alone and bewildered. And then later, the despair, will I, will we, will things ever get better? 

Within minutes after the crash I knew I was not alone and there were helpers everywhere. I know this to be true in any calamity, close by or far away.  The bewilderment stopped as soon as one of the nurses told me I had only one task and should concentrate on it: get better. Healing is hard work and requires all hands on deck – no place for bewilderment – teeter back in position.

But now this bewilderment is there again, because the task of healing is too diffuse to get my head around. I am not sick, but maybe I am? When one of us coughs or sneezes, the other looks up. Is this reason for suspicion or simply part of an innocuous winter cold, a spring allergy?  

And then all the do’s and don’ts’s. Our daughter reminds us that anything coming from outside the house can contain the enemy because we don’t know where it has been, who has touched it. Our newspaper is delivered in a yellow plastic bag with an elastic band to keep the paper inside, on rainy days like today. Should I get the newspaper with cloves on? Remove the plastic bag and elastic band with gloves on? 

We know we are vulnerable, in a physical sense.  You learn that quickly when you fall down to earth. It’s reasonable, and reason is a thing of the mind. The feeling is more difficult to grasp. Right now, I don’t feel vulnerable although our daughters think differently. And that’s when I start to wobble on top of this pinhead. 

Today I am very restless, which is mostly in my head, as we are blessed with sufficient indoor and outdoor physical space to deal with any twitching muscles. I use Headspace, the meditation app, for the inner restlessness, do my yoga with Adriene daily and ride my stationary bike – but the restlessness remains. The entire world, or whatever part we let into our house in the form of newsprint and bits and bytes, is restless. I cannot imagine having restless small kids and a big dog and living in an apartment in a big city in addition to mental restlessness. 

Our kids are checking in on us, always a few steps ahead of what the authorities tell us to do, or rather not to do. The selectmen of our small town called a Zoom meeting yesterday and decided to cordon off the beaches and public spaces because people where not heeding the 6 ft distance. I was told that last week, our famous Singing Beach had several hundred people on it, and kids and dogs playing together as if it was a regular sunny spring day, few keeping their distance – which would be hard on a beach that’s not that big. Our own Lobster Cove beach was also full of kids playing together and adults, everyone bunched up. It is now closed to the public.

Freedom of movement outside one’s house is now over. If people can’t police themselves, the police have to do it – it’s a sad refrain that we have heard since the beginning of the outbreak in China, then Italy, then Spain, France, Holland and so on.  A friend who retired to Spain said owners of second homes at the beach or in the mountains were sent back to their first residence by the police. 

Are people angry or bristling, I asked? Maybe, she said, but Italians and Spaniards are also giving ovations to the people who keep them safe or helping those in need, every evening at 8PM, from their balconies; and the police was ‘sirenading’ the hospital. It’s good to know that calamity does bring out the best in people. I believe that it is only a small minority of people who serve themselves first, those profiteers who quickly bought up needed supplies back in January, or government officials who quickly bought stock in Citrix and Zoom, when they learned that people were encouraged to work from home. 

I was supposed to have my first violin lesson on Zoom today but the timing didn’t work out. My teacher wrote to me that he has been teaching his students over Zoom, Hangout and Facetime, with good results. Who would have thought an online music lesson possible? We are inventing our new lives as we go. Necessity is the mother of invention. Although I actually read Plato’s Republic (in Greek, in high school) I can’t remember that phrase and even if I remembered, it would have meant little to me then. I looked it up and found that lots of other people had different opinions about inventions and necessity, some I agree with and some I don’t.

The joyous 40^th anniversary celebration in Holland is canceled. What part of the already incurred expenses will remain depends on how the small print is interpreted on our travel insurance and whether COVID19 counts as an exception. Insurance is always about exceptions.

The other joyous celebration that always happens at the time of our anniversary is the welcoming of spring in Massachusetts, our Easter celebration/find-your-goodies-hidden around Lobster Cove. We hadn’t sent out the invites yet. They may still come but for a virtual celebration, in spirit, and possibly on Zoom or such.

I attended one of the sessions on Sita’s site but had to pull out because of a very poor connection. It was a poetry reading about “Lost Words,” with music and video. Kids had brought their instruments, and so I did too, the violin and the ukulele, but the poor connection left the instruments unused and me disappointed – there it was again, disappointment upon disappointment.

We had a virtual cocktail hour with friends in the neighborhood who we often hang out with over the weekend – it kind of worked. We made our own cocktails, toasted each other and our health and didn’t need to worry about drinking and driving.

Our brand-new gleamy new lease car stands mostly unused in our drive way as we don’t need any more driving, or very little. We could have done without a 2^nd car and saved ourselves a bundle – how different things are from just a month ago, when people were led to believe this corona thing would soon be over, everything was under control and it was a Democrat hoax. Our country’s leadership must be dizzy from all the spinning it is doing. 

My semi-retirement is now starting to look like full retirement. I no longer wake up at 5AM and go to bed later than I have done for decades. I used to go to the gym to swim or ride a bike at that early hour but all this is now a thing of the past. 

I now do what other retirees are doing: projects in the house. I knit socks or whatever fits the amount of wool I have available. I am re-fashioning my mother-in-law’s braided stair runner that was half consumed by carpet beetles. It’s a huge project that will occupy me for years to come – or not if we are told to stay at home and the electricity/internet goes out.

My other occupation is being a member of the coaching program team of EthicalCoach which focuses, for now, on organizing a year of free coaching of Ethiopian NGOs by world class coaches. I know they are world class because I interviewed people who were coached by them and were transformed. It has strengthened my resolve to continue to coach and promote the coaching profession.

And now there is Sita’s creative response to the new normal of (working, or trying-to-remain-working) parents at home with young children. Her platform allows for what she calls ‘community learning,’ using the expertise, passion and skills from one person to be flowing, like a river, into places where there is interest or even a dire need.

I signed up for next week to talk about Mongolia, a country I visited some years ago. I will put together a series of pictures of this faraway land and contribute to this opening-of-the-minds initiative. I also contacted an actor friend to see if he is willing to read my (as yet unpublished) children’s book about a school bus’ journey to Africa. I wrote it years ago and looked for a while for an illustrator, and then, being unsuccessful, left it languishing on my computer. Maybe this is the time for a world premiere.